After two years of liberal arts study at Yale University, he moved to New York, where he took classes briefly at the Art Students League and began to paint. In 1925 he settled in New York City and took up painting. Although he studied briefly under the painter Max Weber, he was essentially self-taught.
He is known as an American artist. His work is famous and changed the way art was displayed in galleries and museums. Instead of hanging a lot of artworks crammed together on a wall, Rothko insisted on displaying his work alone on a wall so the viewer could fully appreciate the work.
His first paintings were of things he could see, like buildings, people and landscapes. He was a painter who loved mixing colors and later decided that using color was the best way to show how he was feeling.
In 1958 he began a series of murals for a large private dining room on Park Avenue, New York. After eight months of work, when the paintings were completed, the artist decided they were not appropriate for the setting and therefore did not deliver the work.
In 1964, Rothko was commissioned by John and Dominique de Menil to paint murals for a nondenominational chapel in Houston, Texas. The exhibition includes works related to this project in which darkness has become the dominant pictorial and thematic element.
His works include:
Subway series (1930s)
Self-Portrait, 1936
Street Scene, c. 1937
Baptismal Scene (1945)
Mark Rothko - American abstract painter
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Self-Portrait, 1936 |
